Creating Value for All Through IT

The obtainment of value from IT is a recurring theme that has diffused into healthcare information systems (HIS). Having completed the implementation of an integrated HIS, the Faroese Health Service (FHS) has started discussions regarding the obtainment of value from its IT investment which is the subject of this paper. Based on an action research project focusing on the improvement of the stroke process, this paper reveals that it is not possible to distinguish between working processes and HIS and that the realization of value in this context has a much broader significance than mere financial value. During the project, specific key performance indicators (KPIs) were identified and a baseline was established for the stroke process. The outcome is a framework for measuring IS public value as: professional, organizational, patient-perceived and employee-perceived quality as well as learning. Selected non-financial measures for each dimension and their development are presented, e.g., a decrease in mortality.

Managing creativity has proven to be one of the most important drivers in software development and use. The continuous changing market environment drives companies like Google, SAS Institute and LEGO to focus on creativity as an increasing necessity when competing through sustained innovations. However, creativity in the information systems (IS) environment is a challenge for most organizations that is primarily caused by not knowing how to strategize creative processes in relation to IS strategies, thus, causing companies to act ad hoc in their creative endeavors. In this paper, we address the organizational challenges of creativity in software organizations. Grounded in a previous literature review and a rigorous selection process, we identify and present a model of seven important factors for creativity in software organizations. From these factors, we identify 21 challenges that software organizations experience when embarking on creative endeavors and transfer them into a comprehensive framework. Using an interpretive research study, we further study the framework by analyzing how the challenges are integrated in 27 software organizations. Practitioners can use this study to gain a deeper understanding of creativity in their own business while researchers can use the framework to gain insight while conducting interpretive field studies of managing creativity.

Both the practice and the research literature on information systems attach great value to the identification and dissemination of information on “best practices”. In the philosophy of science, this type of knowledge is regarded as technological knowledge because it becomes manifest in the successful techniques in one context. While the value for other contexts is unproven, knowledge of best practices circulates under an assumption that the practices will usefully self-diffuse through innovation and adoption in other contexts. We study diffusion of best practices using a design science approach. The study context is a design case in which an organization desires to diffuse its best practices across different groups. The design goal is embodied in organizational mechanisms to achieve this diffusion. The study used Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) as a kernel theory. The artifacts resulting from the design were two-day training workshops conceptually anchored to TBP. The design theory was evaluated through execution of eight diffusion workshops involving three different groups in the same company. The findings indicate that the match between the practice and the context materialized in the presence of two concordant factors. On the context side, the qualities of the selected opinion leader were necessary to provide the subjective norm described in TPB. On the best practice side, the technological qualities of the best practice itself were necessary to instill the ideal attitude (belief that the behavior will be effective). These two factors were especially critical if the source context of the best practice is qualitatively different from the target context into which the organization is seeking to diffuse the best practice.

Digital innovation is rapidly reshaping society, affecting fundamental aspects of our everyday activities and lives. This development is accompanied with benefits as well as social dilemmas. In this paper we approach this class of challenges in IS digital innovation research. We investigate how social challenges are attended in research agendas, and reflect upon social challenges emerging from a digital service innovation project. Based on the empirical case, we present a scenario that illustrates how social challenges can unfold in digital service innovation. The case exemplifies three conflicts of interest that are used to discuss implications for the research agendas for digital innovation. We propose that explicit attention is paid to social and ethical challenges, taking a large scale and interdisciplinary approach on social and ethical challenges in digital ecosystems.

Our societies are in the midst of a paradigm shift that transforms hierarchal markets into an open and networked economy based on digital technology and information. In that context, open data is widely presumed to have a positive effect on social, environmental and economic value; however the evidence to that effect has remained scarce. Subsequently, we address the question how the use of open data can stimulate the generation of sustainable value. We argue that open data sharing and reuse can empower new ways of generating value in the sharing society. Moreover, we propose a model that describes how different mechanisms that take part within an open system generate sustainable value. These mechanisms are enabled by a number of contextual factors that provide individuals with the motivation, opportunity and ability to generate sustainable value.

This cross-national study evaluates the contingency of the relationship between ICT initiatives and public health outcomes on (1) education; (2) macro-economic stability and; (3) institutions. Resource Based View’s resource complementary perspective and literature on Information and Communication Technology and delivery of public health are used as the guiding theoretical framework. Publicly accessible archived data from more than 150 nations are collected to comprehend the interaction effect. Delivery of public health outcomes is measured through mortality rate (adult), availability of sanitation facilities, incidence of TB and under nourishment. The results indicated that ICT initiatives interact with above three contingencies affecting public health outcomes. Education level positively moderated the relationship between ICT and public health outcomes. Institutions moderated the relationship of ICT and public health outcomes in a positive direction. The moderating effect is measured using PLS. Implications of the findings for theoretical discourse of the resource complimentary perspective and future research are discussed.

Offshoring in the IT-industry involves dual interactions between a mother company and an external supplier, often viewed with an implicit perspective from the mother company. This article review general off shoring and IT offshoring literature, focusing on the proliferation of a globally available set of routines; Scrum and Agile. Two cases are studied; a small company and short process and a large mother company with a long process. The interactions of the set ups shows that global concepts like Scrum and Agile are far from a common platform. The “well known” concepts are locally shaped and the enterprises have mixed experiences.

Software development in distributed teams remains challenging despite rapid technical improvement in tools for communication and collaboration across distance. The challenges stem from geographical, temporal and sociocultural distance and manifest themselves in a variety of difficulties in the development projects. This study has identified a range of difficulties described in the literature of global software development, lacking sufficient solutions. In particular, advice for project managers is lacking. Design science research has been applied to design a model to guide project managers of distributed software teams, based on a practice study and informed by well-known theories. Our work pinpoints the difficulties of handling the vital informal processes in distributed collaboration that are so vulnerable because the distances risk detaining their growth and increasing their decay rate. The research suggest to support and securing these informal processes through explicit and formal means and to ensure management’s continuous focus on this effort to succeed.

We understand software innovation as concerned with introducing innovation into the development of software intensive systems, i.e. systems in which software development and/or integration are dominant considerations. Innovation is key in almost any strategy for competitiveness in existing markets, for creating new markets, or for curbing rising public expenses, and software intensive systems are core elements in most such strategies. Software innovation therefore is vital for about every sector of the economy. Changes in software technologies over the last decades have opened up for experimentation, learning, and flexibility in ongoing software projects, but how can this change be used to facilitate software innovation? How can a team systematically identify and pursue opportunities to create added value in ongoing projects? In this paper, we describe Deweyan pragmatism as the philosophical foundation for Essence – a software innovation methodology – where unknown options and needs emerge as part of the development process itself. The foundation is illustrated via a simple example.

Value creation through information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) is a major IS research topic. However there still exists an ambiguity and fuzziness of the ‘IS business value’ concept and a lack of clarity surrounding the value creation process. This also true for organizations that develop IS/IT and for development technologies like information systems development and project management methods that are applied in the production of IS/IT. The agile method Scrum is one such technology. In the research presented here we studied productivity, quality and employee satisfaction as supported by Scrum as value creating measures. Our positive assessment is built upon subjective perceptions and goes beyond hard measures and indicators. It provides insights into individual and organisational impacts and sheds light on the value generation process. The measures we present thus deal with some of the deficiencies in current IS business value research and contribute to filling existing gaps in an IS business value research agenda.

This paper looks at processes of embedding of computer systems in four organisational case studies in three different countries. A selective literature study of implementation of computer systems leads the authors to suggest that seen from a top down managerial perspective employees may be assumed to accept and use new computer systems, for example an ERP system but what happens deep down in the organisation are a reshaping, domestication or appropriation of the software for example through developing workarounds. The authors further suggest that traditional implementation models may incorrectly assume that the computer systems has been embedded in the organisation because things appear to be running smoothly when in fact software and/or processes have been reshaped by employees to suit their local needs. These social shapings appear to be done for a multitude of reasons. However, from the qualitative case studies it appears that most workarounds are done to make work easier and/or to overcome perceived inflexibilities in existing enterprise mandated systems. The ubiquitous access to cloud technologies and an increasing workforce of tech savy “digital natives” using their own devices (BYOD) has exacerbated the situation.

The increased health problems associated with lack of physical activity is of great concern around the world. Mobile phone based fitness applications appear to be a cost effective promising solution for this problem. The aim of this study is to develop a research model that can broaden understanding of the factors that influence the user acceptance of mobile fitness apps. Drawing from Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), we conceptualize the antecedents and moderating factors of fitness app use. We validate our model using field survey. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Based on an empirical quantitative study, this article investigates employee motivation in Danish companies and aims at determining which factors affect employees’ knowledge sharing through social media in a working environment. Our findings pinpoint towards the potential social media have for enhancing internal communication, knowledge sharing and collaboration in organizations, but the adoption is low, at this point, due to mainly organizational and individual factors. Technological factors do not seem to affect employees’ motivation for knowledge sharing as much as previous research has found, but it is the influence from the combination of individual and organizational factors, which affect the adoption of the platforms. A key finding in the study is that knowledge sharing is not a ‘social dilemma’ as previous studies have found. The study shows a positive development in employees’ willingness to share knowledge, because knowledge sharing is considered more beneficial than to hoard it.

Cloud computing has received increasing interest from enterprises since its inception. With its innovative information technology (IT) services delivery model, cloud computing could add technical and strategic business value to enterprises. However, cloud computing poses highly concerning internal (e.g., Top management and experience) and external issues (e.g., regulations and standards). This paper presents a systematic literature review to explore the current key issues related to cloud computing adoption. This is achieved by reviewing 51 articles published about cloud computing adoption. Using the grounded theory approach, articles are classified into eight main categories: internal, external, evaluation, proof of concept, adoption decision, implementation and integration, IT governance, and confirmation. Then, the eight categories are divided into two abstract categories: cloud computing adoption factors and processes, where the former affects the latter. The results of this review indicate that enterprises face serious issues before they decide to adopt cloud computing. Based on the findings, the paper provides a future information systems (IS) research agenda to explore the previously under-investigated areas regarding cloud computing adoption factors and processes. This paper calls for further theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the research area of cloud computing adoption by enterprises.

Past decades have seen business platforms proliferate not only as a means to collaborate, but also decrease time-to-market and promote innovation. However, extant literature tends to dichotomise platforms, perceiving them as either strategic resources or technical systems. Applied to digital platforms, we argue that options theory offers a potential means to reconcile the operand and operant perspectives of platform artefacts. We illustrate our point via a case study of a firm that has gradually developed a product that enables mobile communication into a digital platform that provides a wide range of customers with services from several different suppliers. This study contributes to our understanding of digital platforms as it describes how design choices by a provider can affect flexibility and continued development of new services.

Patients seek attention and treatments to various types of diseases and symptoms. Diseases infection and symptoms are often not predictive. Normally, there is a spread and movement of people across the geographical locations, of both the rural and urban communities, in countries including Namibia. As such, healthcare could be needed at any location, and at anytime. There is significant mobility of individuals and groups within a country. Unfortunately, the healthcare services are not always as mobile at the level and speed that individuals and groups does in Namibia. Hence, there is need for the mobility of healthcare services at both primary and secondary healthcare levels, particularly in the developing countries, such as Namibia.

The population of Namibia is scantly spread among its towns and cities. The major towns and cities are situated, in the average of 175km far apart from each other, in the country’s 825, 418km square landscape. The spread necessitates movements of individuals and groups, particularly the old, poor, and nomadic people. Unfortunately, healthcare records in the country are not centralised and virtualised, making accessibility into patients’ records difficult or impossible, from any location. As a result, healthcare service delivering is challenged. This study therefore explored and examined the possibility of mobility of healthcare services to those who live in the country.

The study employed the qualitative research method, within which data was gathered from primary healthcare service providers, using open-ended questionnaires. The Moments of Translation from the perspective of actor network theory (ANT) was used as a lens in the analysis of the data, to examine and understand the power and factors, which influences mobility of healthcare service in Namibia. Categorisation of Patients, Response Time, Understanding the Actors, Actors’ participatory to service delivery, and Actors’ Alliance were found to be the influencing factors in the provision of mobility of healthcare services.

This paper explains how the financial industry is solving its data, risk management, and associated vocabulary problems using semantic technologies. The paper is the first to examine this phenomenon and to identify the social and institutional mechanisms being applied to socially construct a standard common vocabulary using ontology-based models. This standardized ontology-based common vocabulary will underpin the design of next generation of semantically-enabled information systems (IS) for the financial industry. The mechanisms that are helping institutionalize this common vocabulary are identified using a longitudinal case study, whose embedded units of analysis focus on central agents of change—the Enterprise Data Management Council and the Object Management Group. All this has important implications for society, as it is intended that semantically-enabled IS will, for example, provide stakeholders, such as regulators, with better transparency over systemic risks to national and international financial systems, thereby mitigating or avoiding future financial crises.

The field of information systems (IS) has throughout its history experienced extensive changes in technology, research, and education. These renewals will continue into the foreseeable future [10]. It is recognized that IS is a key force in the ongoing societal and organizational renewal and change [2, 8, 14]. For example, in the US business sector, IS continues yearly to consume about 30% of total investments made [5]. Recent research document that IS supports the creation of business value, with particular emphasis on an organization’s innovation and change capabilities [1, 3]. Traditionally, research in IS has been interdisciplinary in nature - since it draws on innovation theory, models of value creation, actors’ roles and behaviors, the creation and running of task oriented groups, and how these relate to organizational structures and mechanisms [24]. Throughout its history the question of benefits from investing in IS has been lively discussed.

Cloud computing’s potential in creating and capturing business value is being increasingly acknowledged. Existing empirical studies of business value in cloud computing have focused on user organizations and large enterprises with legacy systems. Acknowledging the innovation opportunities created by cloud, we study entrepreneurial cloud service providers. In this paper we conduct an exploratory study of six cloud-based start-up firms in India. We examine the value dimensions of the business model concept to study entrepreneurial value creation in the cloud. We find that cloud is a key resource in the structural configuration of their business model and enables the value proposition.

With the unprecedented growth of mobile technologies, governments of both developed and developing countries have started adopting mobile services in the form of m-government. While the vendors and practitioners are heavily engaged in this transformation, the scholarly world is lagging to keep pace with the progress and to provide clear theoretical guidance for successful adoption. This paper takes a stock of scholarly publications on m-government adoption since the year 2000 and reports findings and future directions based on meta-analysis of secondary data. The articles were classified into research themes, delivery mode, theory and methods. The paper identifies the dearth of scholarly work and calls for more in-depth work to make important contribution in this area.

Telecommunications is increasingly vital to the society at large, and has become essential to business, academic, as well as social activities. Due to the necessity to have access to telecommunications, the deployment requires regulations and policy. Otherwise, the deployment of the infrastructures would contribute to environment, and human complexities rather than ease of use.

However, the formulation of telecommunication infrastructure deployment regulation and policy involve agents such as people and processes. The roles of the agents are critical, and are not as easy as it meant to belief. This could be attributed to different factors, as they produce and reproduce themselves overtime.

This paper presents the result of a study which focused on understanding how non-technical factors enable and constrain the development and implementation of telecommunications infrastructure sharing regulations. In the study, the interactions that take place amongst human and non-human agents were investigated. The study employed the duality of structure, of Structuration Theory as lens to understand the effectiveness of interactions in the formulation of regulations, and how policy is used to facilitate the deployment of telecommunications infrastructure in the South African environment.

In recent years Living Labs, which embody an open innovation milieu, have gained currency as representing a salient catalyst for Smart City research and development. However, the current body of Living Lab research, in conjunction with the fragmented isolated nature of existing Living Labs dispersed across the European Union (EU), indicate that a lack of common standardised IT governance procedures are currently being operationalised. While cross border pan European Living Lab initiatives are emerging to rectify this issue, further research is warranted to better understand the role of IT governance in Living Labs and identify how varying IT governance mechanisms impact the effectiveness of open innovation processes. Thus, this paper begins a theory building process for examining IT governance in living labs. The paper concludes by presenting a conceptual framework for future testing.

Despite substantial research on electronic health (e-Health) adoption, there still exist vast differences between resource-rich and resource-poor populations regarding Information Technology adoption. To help bridge the technological gulf between developed and developing countries, this research-in-progress paper examines healthcare providers’ intention to adopt e-health technologies from two perspectives 1) contextual factors (i.e. specific to developing world settings) and 2) individual value dimensions (i.e. cultural, utilitarian, social and personal). The primary output of this paper is a theoretical model merging both the contextual factors and value dimensions; this forms a strong baseline to examine and help ensure the successful adoption of e-Health technologies within developing countries. Future research will be performed to validate the model developed in this paper, with a specific focus on mobile Health in Malawi, Africa.

In this paper we look at opportunities to support the creation of value for all through the use of end-user-owned Virtual Personal Assistant. We use a chat-bot as example of technology with a possibility for transferring and diffusing new functionality, features and capabilities. This category of software can create potential value through its AI and natural language processing combined with emulation and imitation of emotional engagement which is personal, private and as such allows for intimate contextual relevance to be developed.

This experience report aims to reflect on a design initiative conducted as a user-focused innovation. It is based on a research and development project about mobile commerce. Herein, I include various forms of mobile services that accumulate the core function of mobile payments. The target group of the design was senior citizens who need to have their grocery shopping done in a more safe and convenient way. In this report I will particularly focus on the design process and the design product.